


Ain't No Fran Fine

by letsgostealafandom



Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Nanny, F/M, Kid Fic, Like everyone still did what they did and are still on the other side of the law, Multi, Unbeta'd, adopt kid, after the first part she's barely in the fic, but like, i guess, i'm so sorry that this exists and is in your eyeballs now, kidfic is not my forte, nanny!Eliot, neither are AUs tbh, parents!Parker and Hardison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-09-09
Packaged: 2018-08-14 02:09:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7994764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letsgostealafandom/pseuds/letsgostealafandom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Okay, this is from the AU meme <a href="http://letsgostealafandom.tumblr.com/post/150101468658/send-me-a-ship-and-a-number-and-ill-write-a-short">here</a>.</p><p>I’m ignoring the single parent part of this because I make great choices and also can you imagine Parker and Hardison with like an adopted kid and they’re still a hacker and a thief and then they need a babysitter and hire Eliot and-</p><p>Okay, to the half-assed story:</p><p> </p><p>  <b>46. nanny<s>/single parent</s> au</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	Ain't No Fran Fine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FullmetalChords](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FullmetalChords/gifts).



> Man, this is unbeta'd, I am so sorry. For [phoenixrei](http://phoenixrei.tumblr.com/)

The thing was, they had never expected to have kids. Kids weren't exactly conducive to the whole Robin Hood thing they had going on (most of the time; sometimes it was less Robin Hood and more Parker-Likes-Money, but whatever).

Alec had never really been able to say no to Parker, but when they took down an international crime ring using an orphanage as a front and Parker stared at the kids for a long time and said, "We should adopt one of them," he tried. He really did.

"Remember that time we thought we should get a dog?" he asked.

"This is different," she said with a scowl.

"Okay, but you can't just find a new home for the kid if it doesn't work out."

" _I know that_ ," she snapped.

"What are we gonna do when we're on a job? Or planning one? You can't just… leave a kid alone like that."

This made Parker pause for a moment and ask, "Why not? I was fine."

Alec didn't wipe a hand down his face, didn't think about kid!Parker being left on her own for days at a time, didn't think about how much he wanted to find her parents and everyone who fostered her and destroy their lives.

(He'd offered, once. Parker didn't really understand why he cared that much, since she'd turned out okay. He'd told her she turned out okay, so what did it matter?)

"It's..." he started carefully. "You did real good, but it's not a thing good parents do. And I-" and he realized this was true at the same time he was saying it "-I wanna be a good parent. Better than we had."

She nodded. "Okay, then we get a nanny."

He didn't end up winning the argument, which was how they ended up with a six-year-old and pausing the job they were planning to get her settled and interview nannies.

"I don't like her," Liv whispered to him, loud enough for the woman they were interviewing to be able to hear.

He shot the woman an apologetic look and shrugged a little. "Sorry?"

They had agreed before starting, all three of them, that Liv had final veto powers, since she was the one who would have to be home alone with the person. Alec was starting to think that was a mistake, though, because Liv seemed determined to reject every single person that came through their door.

"Hey, Liv," he said while Parker showed the woman out. "You just gonna say no to every person who comes through here?"

"She smelled funny," she said.

Which, okay, that was true. Like mothballs and the weird flowers Nana kept in the front room at home. "You know," he said, slow and careful because man did the kid have a set of lungs on her when she wanted to throw a tantrum. "We're still gonna be home with you most the time, just, upstairs working instead of down here with you."

Her lip wobbled, and all Alec could think was _shit shit shit_. They had the next person coming to interview in fifteen minutes.

"We're not gonna abandon you to some stranger," he said, fast, "and we can always fire them if it turns out you really don't like them."

And her eyes were filling with tears and man it was going to be so embarrassing if his kid was hysterical when the next guy arrived in… ten minutes. Also: it was surprisingly upsetting when Liv has upset. He didn't think either of them had been prepared for how attached they get over the course of a couple months.

"Aw, kid," he said when she started to cry and hugged her to him. He didn't know which was worse, when she threw a screaming tantrum or times like now, when she was just silently crying. Nana had had so much useful advice for them, but it included exactly zero pieces of advice on what to do when your kid was breaking your heart.

"What'd you do?" Parker hissed at him when she came back, taking Liv from him so she could cling to Parker like a barnacle.

"Nothing!" he said. "I just asked if she was gonna turn down everyone we had lined up to interview!"

Parker looked just as mystified as he felt. They were so bad at this, sometimes, and Alec hated being confronted with proof that love didn't conquer everything, no matter how much he wanted it to.

"What if we cancel the rest of today's interviews and go get some ice cream at the park?" Parker asked, jostling Liv a little to make sure she was paying attention.

Yes, put off the problem for another day. Alec was completely down with that. Liv seemed okay with it, so he grabbed tissues to wipe off her face while Parker got shoes on her, and they walked to the park.

Liv was happy with the chocolate cone they got her from the ice cream cart and walked beside them while they talked quietly about how they were going to find a nanny if Liv wasn't going to cooperate.

"Maybe if I call Nana..." Alec started, thinking that maybe if they asked real nice they could send Liv to stay with her when they needed to travel.

"We can't, remember?" Parker said. "She's got a full house right now. And we'd still need someone to watch her while we're working."

"What about-" he started and stopped short when he realized Liv wasn't next to him anymore. "Shit," he said, meeting Parker's eyes for a moment before turning in a circle to scan around the park. "Liv?" he yelled, but none of the little dark-haired girls on the jungle gym looked up, and the kid up ahead of them petting someone's dog was a boy, and-

" _Olivia_ ," Parker yelled suddenly, and fifty feet away – how had she got over there that fast? Alec could swear she had been next to them a second ago – their kid was by a bench, talking to a guy who was reaching into the pocket of his jacket-

The thing was, it was hard to do what they did without making enemies. Alec was certain that no one knew their real identities, or the identities they'd used to adopt Liv. But still, they had enemies, and it wasn't exactly out of the realm of possibility that, if one of their enemies should find out they had a kid, well.

Parker was skidding to a stop, snatching up Liv only seconds before Alec got there, putting his body in front of them even as he saw that the guy was just pulling a napkin out of his pocket. He sagged like a puppet with cut strings for a moment, because god, that had been terrifying.

The guy raised his eyebrows and handed the napkin to Alec while Parker hugged Liv and told her to never do that again.

"First time you lost her?" the guy asked, not getting up from his seat.

"Uh." Alec said, distracted by wiping off Liv's sticky hand that wasn't holding the ice cream cone. "Yeah, yeah. We haven't had her for long."

The guy nodded and tucked a piece of hair that had escaped from his messy manbun back behind his ear. "She seems like a good kid."

"Yeah," Alec said, still riding that wave of relief. "Yeah, she is. So, what's a good-looking guy like you doing in a place like this?"

Parker snorted a little laugh as Alec cursed his traitorous mouth, and the guy cracked something that might've been almost a smile.

"Don't know about the good-lookin' part, but my job interview got canceled. I'm just taking a break before I head home."

"Job interview?" Parker asked, done lecturing Liv and setting her on the ground. She immediately climbed up onto the bench next to the guy and went back to licking her ice cream.

"Yeah."

Alec never did know when to quit, so he asked, "What for?"

"Nanny for some rich people's kid." The guy gave a careless shrug, but his eyes were sharp, daring them to say anything.

Alec and Parker looked at each other, then over at Liv, then back at each other. "Uh," Alec said, and Parker shrugged back at him.

"What?" the guy asked, sounding defensive and cross.

"Why're you looking for work?" Parker asked, sitting down on the opposite side of the guy from Liv. He suddenly looked uncomfortable, and Alec stepped to the side to let him get up and escape Parker's questioning if he wanted to. But he relaxed and answered.

"I just got out of the… private security business." His voice caught in the middle of the sentence. Alec was sure that wasn't what he was originally going to say, but if it was true… What better nanny than someone who used to be private security?

"Was your interview over on Berkeley?" Parker asked, and the guy looked between the two of them carefully and nodded after a moment.

"Yeah," he said. "The Hardisons."

"Whoops," Parker said, and looked up at Alec.

"Yeah," he said to her. "Whoops. Hey, Liv." He waited until she looked up at him. "How about him?"

"What for?" she asked, her ice cream cone listing to the side.

"To watch you while we're-"

"No," Liv said.

The guy was looking slightly panicked again, but tough, Alec decided. If he couldn't handle their decision making process then he wasn't right for them anyway. He'd read like a hundred parenting books, okay. If this guy wasn't okay with their- their style of parenting, well. Better they know now so they can rule him out.

"Don't you want to-"

"No!" she yelled, dropping her ice cream so she could ball up her fists. When she realized that her ice cream was on the ground, though, she burst into tears.

"Oh, hey now, sweetheart," the guy said, seemingly automatically, before immediately backing off and looking apologetically at the two of them.

Alec scooped up Liv, letting her knot her gross ice cream-covered fists into his shirt while she cried. "We can get more ice cream," he said, helplessly glancing at Parker while he floundered. "You don't- You can-"

You'd think he'd be used to it by now, he thought, with just a trace of bitterness. Parker had talked him into this and it'd seemed like it would be so easy for the first three weeks. Then… Well, then it became clear that being a parent was way harder than either of them thought it was, and they were maybe spectacularly bad at it.

"I don't want you to _go_ ," she hiccuped, digging her heel into Alec's kidney, ow.

He looked over at Parker, who was hovering next to them, and she looked stricken. He hadn't really thought this part through, hadn't considered that it wouldn't be just them they had to think about when jetting off to other parts of the states to run games on people and redistribute wealth. Hadn't considered that now they had to take the wishes of a six-year-old into consideration.

"They'll be back," the guy said suddenly, and Liv looked at him, angry and tear-streaked. "Right?" he asked.

"Right- Right? Of course, _right_ ," Alec snapped, like that was ever in question. "Of course we'll be back."

"We'll be back," Parker said, coming to stand where Liv could grab her too, hanging onto Alec's shirt with one sticky hand and Parker's with the other. "And we're… We're taking a break."

 _Right?_ her eyes asked Alec over Liv's head.

"Right," Alec said. "We won't be leaving for- for six months at least." That was as far as they could put off their current job, at least. "We'll, you know, just be working upstairs while you're playing with- with whoever downstairs. Okay?"

"And if you still don't want us to leave later on we'll- We'll talk about it," Parker said. They couldn't guarantee that they wouldn't have to leave ever, but they could drop this job and do another one later on. It wouldn't be a problem.

Liv wiped her nose on Alec's shirt, and Parker took the napkins that the guy was holding out and wiped off Liv's face, made her blow her nose. All those fun parent things that Alec thought he'd find gross but didn't seem to mind now.

"So what about him, kid?" Alec asks once it looks like she's stopped crying. The guy is still sitting there, kind of awkward in his stillness.

"I don't care," Liv said, letting Parker take her from Alec.

"Sorry," Alec said, turning to the guy. "We didn't catch your name."

"Eliot. Eliot Spencer."

"Okay, Eliot-Eliot-Spencer," Alec said, sticking out his hand. "Want a job?"

###

"Oh god, that smells good," Alec said, putting down the blueprints and sniffing the air. Liv and Eliot should've come back from the park maybe half an hour ago, so probably Eliot was making her dinner, but damn. That was some tasty-smelling dinner.

It'd been three weeks since they'd hired Eliot, and so far, everything was working out. Liv liked him, Alec liked him, even Parker liked him. He seemed to like them well enough, and was real, real good with Liv.

Parker was sniffing the air too, and with a glance at each other, they headed downstairs to see if they couldn't get a taste of whatever Eliot was making for their kid.

"Hey," Eliot said when they came into the kitchen, looking weirdly embarrassed. Liv was at the table coloring, and there were scattered reusable grocery bags around Eliot's feet. "We stopped by the farmer's market. I'm making soup – should be enough for you three for a couple meals."

"You-" Alec started, mouth watering because man did it smell good down. "You don't have to do that."

"I know," Eliot said, looking even more embarrassed. "Think of it as a thank you. For-"

"We should be thanking you," Alec interrupted. "You're- You just- I'm just sayin', you've been great for us."

"Look!" Liv said, sliding down off the chair and pushing her drawing into Alec's hands. It was a shakily drawn house, with the three of them in front of it.

"This is awesome," he said, and added, "I'm gonna put it on the fridge, okay?"

Eliot was watching them with something soft in his eyes, but he turned away as soon as he noticed Alec looking at him. Which meant he was just in time to catch Parker dipping a spoon into the soup pot and tasting it.

"Hey!" he said, going to smack her hand with the wooden spoon he was holding and stopping with a jerk at the last second. "No tasting before it's done."

"But it's so good," she said. "Hardison, come taste this."

He grabbed the first magnet he could to hold the drawing on the fridge, then turned and slipped by Eliot to taste the soup.

"Oh, for-" Eliot said, stopping himself from finishing the sentence. Which was good, because Alec wasn't planning on ever letting him live it down if he swore in front of Liv, not when he looked so cross every time they swore in front of her. "Stop it," he said instead. "At least wait until it's closer to being done to taste it."

"Oh man, this is good," Alec said, about to dip his spoon back into the pot before Eliot snatched it out of his hand.

"No double dipping!"

Alec looked at Parker and shrugged, willing to give it up for the moment. Eventually Eliot would need to do something – he didn't know what, but he was sure that he couldn't just stand in front of the stove forever – and then they could steal some more.

"How much do we owe you for the groceries?" Alec asked, distracting Eliot while Parker went in for another spoonful.

Eliot opened is mouth to say something, then shook his head a little and said, "Thirty bucks."

Thirty bucks was well-worth whatever was in that pot.

Eliot making dinner for everyone slowly morphed from being a once-a-week thing, to being a nightly thing, to him staying for dinner half the time when they convinced Liv to whine about it enough. Somehow, their own whining never worked.

He fit into their lives comfortably, like he'd always been there. And if sometimes he was standoffish to them, and grumpy, and looked put upon at their presence, it was balanced out by how good he was with Liv.

And the food, of course. The food counted for a lot.

###

Eliot was becoming a problem.

The man was great with Liv. He made them delicious food and stayed for dinner three nights out of the week. He stayed later after dinner half the time, just chatting and hanging out with them. He seemed like he genuinely _liked_ them. And hell, he was more than easy on the eyes.

At the end of six months, they scrapped the job they were working on and decided to pull one close to home. The idea of leaving Liv for the two weeks it would've taken to run the game on the mark was just… neither of them were comfortable doing that. Not yet.

Liv, for her part, hadn't become less clingy to the two of them, had just added Eliot into her circle of people to cling to. He was an okay substitute when she couldn't have them, or was mad at them. Eliot always got a half-panicked look on his face whenever that happened, like this wasn't how he'd expected this job to go.

It was cute.

And that was the problem, right there. Alec knew what it felt like to be falling in love with someone, and knowing about all of Eliot's favorite sports teams even though Alec wasn't a fan of real sports (now, give him a game conroller and FIFA and he was all over that shit, but real sports? Not so much) fit under that heading. Letting Eliot boss them around fell under that heading. Hell, the amount of time he spent wanting to run his fingers through Eliot's stupid hair and kiss him fell right under that heading.

He'd feel bad about it, except, well. He also knew what Parker looked like when she was falling in love with someone, at least from one angle. The falling in love-ee's angle. There were also the late-night conversations, when everything was quiet and soft, where they talked about him.

One night, Parker roilled over in bed to face Alec and asked, "You can't be in love with two people at once, right?"

And Alec had to take a moment, to let his heart calm down from where it had leapt into his throat. It was the wrong thing to do, because Parker looked more and more worried in the light of the streetlight outside as he didn't answer.

"Alec?" she asked, her voice quiet and unsure.

"I think" he finally said "that it depends on the people involved."

Look, he spent enough time on the internet to know all about this sort of thing in theory. He just… didn't really have practical experience in the more… mundane parts. Like dating and conversations like this and pretty much anything that wasn't a hot one-night stand with two girls, or two guys, or-

"I think I like Eliot," she said in a rush, her voice barely there, before asking plaintively, "I don't- What do I do?"

"I-" Alec said, then stopped. Because what were they supposed to do? There wasn't an online "how to ask out the nanny" guide – or, okay, there probably was, but he doubted it would be helpful – and could they even risk him quitting, if things didn't go right? It was hard enough to get Liv to agree to stay with him at first. Did they really want to do that all over again? And-

Except he was getting ahead of himself.

"What do you want to do?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said, curling in on herself a little. He wanted to reach out and grab her hand, pull her to him, but sometimes conversations like these, the dark of the night conversations, were easier for her if they weren't touching.

"It wouldn't be the first time I had a threesome," he said, "If that's what you want?"

"I don't know," she said again, but this time it was the "I don't know" of "I do but don't want to say."

"I can't just guess," Alec said gently, unable to stop himself from reaching out and tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear.

"Is dating two people at once something normal people do?" Her voice was louder, now, but still so unsure that it was breaking his heart.

"We make our own normal, babe," he said. They were thieves, when it came right down to it. Breaking one more cultural taboo wouldn't be the thing that sent them to hell.

She nodded a little, and asked, "What do you want to do?"

He floundered for a moment, because how did she know he even wanted to do something? Except she had gotten so much better at reading his body language since they met, and had probably caught him watching Eliot with dopey eyes more than once.

"I-" he said and then stopped, sighed. "I want to make him terrible breakfast in bed and take him to hockey games and make out with you both in the back of movie theaters and-" he covered his face with his hands. How had he let it get to this point?

"Yeah," Parker said.

Yeah.

###

The first time they asked him out, it was almost midnight and Eliot had fallen asleep on the couch, his head on Parker's shoulder. She jostled him a little, and he startled awake, blinking hard and sitting up fast.

"We should go to the movies," she said.

"Tomorrow?" Eliot asked, yawning, and stretching a little as he tried to subtly move away from her on the couch.

"Yeah," Alec said from his spot on the other side of Parker.

"Let me see what I can find that Liv will like," Eliot said, pulling out his phone like he hadn't been asleep thirty seconds ago. Like first dates should include the grade school aged child of the two of the people. Like-

Oh. He didn't realize it was supposed to be a date. But that was okay; Alec could work with that.

At the movie, Liv sat between him and Parker, with Eliot sitting next to him. Perfect for some subtle popcorn sharing and maybe a good old-fashioned yawn-and-stretch or something. Little things. Alec could do subtle.

Alec could not do subtle.

At first, Eliot kept casting him funny looks every time their hands brushed in the popcorn tub they were sharing. But after a while, he seemed to decide to just roll with it, letting their fingers brush and catch without a look. It was… progress, probably.

The yawn-and-stretch, which Parker always found hilarious when he did it to her, did not, on the other hand, go over so well.

"Keep your hands to yourself," Eliot hissed, looking pissed and uncomfortable. Alec jerked his arm back and mouthed a "sorry" to him. Eliot didn't look all that satisfied, but turned his attention back to the movie anyway.

When Parker looked over, Alec shrugged a little. He couldn't tell if Eliot knew what was going on and was shooting them down, or if something had gotten lost in translation. Probably something got lost in translation.

The second attempt to ask Eliot out didn't go much better. They ended up at Applebee's, which wasn't the intent when Alec suggested they go out for dinner – he had something fancier in mind – but Eliot had suggested it because Liv loved the food there, and, well.

While Liv chattered at Alec about the game she and Eliot had played that afternoon – something involving a princess and a dragon and a rescue "but not by a prince, princes are icky, Eliot says princesses can rescue their selves" and man, little kid games were complicated – he watched as Parker attempted her best moves.

He loved her, but man, outside of a con, her moves were bad.

"Knock it off, Parker," Eliot hissed eventually and shifted his feet away. "I'm not Hardison."

Parker only looked a little put-out, and shrugged at Alec when Eliot looked away, his face a little flushed.

The third time they asked Eliot out, they decided it would be smart to just _ask_ him.

"Hey Eliot," Alec said, after dinner was finished and Liv was put to bed and the house was quiet. He met Parker's eyes over Eliot's head for a moment, and she nodded just the tiniest bit at him. "Want to go on a date with me and Parker?"

Eliot went perfectly still, like a rabbit that'd sensed a fox.

"I don't-" he started, casting an almost panicked look between them. "I'm not-"

Alec stepped back so Eliot didn't feel trapped against the sink – one of the things that made him wonder what exactly Eliot had done in the past was the way he seemed to always need an escape route if people were too close to him. His official record – the one Alec pulled up doing a thorough background check – didn't include anything that would've made him that skittish.

"Hey, man," he said as he shifted back. "We're not tying to force you into anything."

"Yeah," Parker said, backing up a little, too. "No pressure."

Eliot snorted at that, but the panic was fading from his eyes. "Look," he started. "First of all, you know you don't need to be dating someone to fuck them, right?"

He was still on edge, going by the harsh bite of his words. And now that he was thinking about it, Alec could kind of understand why maybe they should have eased him into the idea better. They were kind of putting Eliot in a tough position here. And was Eliot even into threesomes? Man, he should've done more research.

Before he could reassure Eliot that a "no" didn't mean he would lose his job, Parker was talking.

"It's not about fucking you," she said. "It's about-" She cast a helpless look at Alec before continuing with, "It's about everything else. Dumb stuff."

"We wouldn't be doing this if it was just about sex," Alec told Eliot. He jerked his head up toward Liv's bedroom. "We wouldn't do that to her."

Parker nodded, agreeing with him. "That wouldn't be as important as this."

Eliot blinked at her for a moment. "You know I can't work for you if we're dating."

Alec and Parker nodded, Alec's face twisting a little as he imagined doing another set of interviews. But… "It'd be worth it, for us," he said.

Eliot blinked at him, this time, looking taken aback a little. "Worth it, huh?" he said.

"Yeah," Parker said. "We know it's kinda weird to be dating two people-"

"It-" Eliot interrupted, before Alec interrupted him.

"It's kinda weird," he said with an air of finality, backing up Parker because, well. She was right. It wasn't normal, but since when did the two of them do normal?

"Okay," Eliot said, leaning back against the sink, the tension draining out of his body. "Okay."

"What, really?" came out of Alec's mouth without permission.

"Yeah," Eliot said, a different kind of tension coming over him as his gaze flicked back and forth between them. Less like a trapped animal, and more in anticipation of something.

"We, uh," Alec said, glancing at Parker, who looked just as stunned as he felt. "We didn't think this far ahead."

"It's okay," Eliot said, a half-smile on his face. "We got time."

A slow grin spread across Alec's face, a matching one on Parker's as she leaned in to kiss Eliot. They'd need to talk about what would happen when Eliot got sick of them telling him their work was classified, and how they were going to convince Liv that a different nanny was okay, but for now, this was all they needed.

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> Th-th-th-that's all, folks!
> 
> (Consider…
> 
> …the first time someone comes after Parker and Hardison and _Liv_ , and Eliot has to protect them.
> 
> …the resulting screaming match between the three of them, because Eliot found out “classified” meant “illegal and dangerous.”
> 
> …the first time someone tries to get to _Eliot_ through Liv.
> 
> …Parker and Hardison threatening to hold that over his head for all eternity, once the terror wore off, because they weren’t the only ones putting Liv in danger.
> 
> …”The difference, _Alec_ , is that’s in my _past_. This is your _present_.”
> 
> …they never do get Eliot to join them on a con, but it’s okay because nothing is more hilarious than watching how pissy he gets every time Liv pickpockets him, after Parker teaches her. It’s totally worth it.)


End file.
